J. Robb: Indulgence in death

“Just what they’ve given me. The surface connections, but I need to make it personal. Them, me. Budget’s stretched,” she decided. “Yeah. I can’t access the resources through the department, but I’ll use my own money to get those resources outside the department. Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know I’ve got more money than the two of you put together? That’ll speak to them, won’t it?” she asked Mira. “He bought me, but now I can get my hands on billions as long as I bang him when he wants it.”

“A fool and his money,” Roarke murmured, amused despite himself.

Mira let out a little sigh. “I would say it’s their probable view of your relationship.”

“And I’d say this no longer sounds like a backup plan,” Roarke put in.

“Feeney’s right, I front the play. I can time it. Hit them after I know, or am reasonably sure, we’re going to get the warrants, but before we serve them. It’s just adding incentive for them to move up their timetable. We sting them right,” she insisted, and Roarke understood she was pushing to get him in her corner, “they go after me, they go after a cop, they’re done. Their high-priced lawyers, their family fortunes, their goddamn pedigrees aren’t going to keep them out of a cage for the rest of their lives.”

“Is that what worries you?” he asked. “That even with the case you’ve built, even with the evidence you believe you’ll gather with the warrants, they’ll slip through the system?”

“They worry me.” In one sharp move, she pointed to the board, to the faces of the dead. “The chance I’ll have to put another up there worries me.”

He watched her realize she’d let her emotions spike, let them show in front of her superior. And he watched her draw them down again, draw them in.

“They want me up there,” she said in a tone both cool and flat, “so we’ll make them want me up there sooner.”

“You know, I’ve been working on something like this off and on.” Feeney continued to study the wrist unit as his casual comment defused the charged air. “This one’s nice and compact, got more bells and whistles than I’d worked out.”

He glanced up, his gaze flicking over Roarke before homing in on Eve. “What would be prime is if you run into them-the both of you-someplace. Public place. Restaurant, club, like that. That’s what fries you, see, trying to get a little downtime, and there they are in your face. Maybe you’re already pissy, having a spat with Roarke, and that just shoves you over the line. That way it comes off impulse. Like you just lost it there for a minute.”

“That is prime,” Eve agreed.

“I’ve got moments.” Feeney rose, handed the unit back to Eve, looked at Roarke. “That’s nice work.”

“Thanks.”

“Peabody, see if you can find out where they’re going to be tonight. At least one of them. Friday night… they’re not going to sit at home playing mah-jongg.”

“It’ll be easier and quicker for me to find out.” Roarke took out his ’link, walked away.

“Still want eyes and ears on you,” Feeney told her.

“Fine.” She stuck her hands in her pockets as she tracked Roarke out of the room.

“You keep them on, unless you’re locked up in that fortress you live in, or you’re working toward getting your hands on some billions.”

“What…” It struck her. “Jesus, Feeney.”

“You started it. I’ll start setting it up.”

“I want two officers on you at all times. That starts now,” Whitney added.

“McNab and I will take tonight.”

“They’ve seen you,” Eve reminded Peabody.

“They won’t make me.”

Mira slipped out, waiting until Roarke put his ’link away.

“I’m going to apologize to you,” she began. “I couldn’t, in good conscience, keep my opinion to myself, even knowing how she’d react, what she’d do. But I’m sorry.”

“I’m obliged to accept what she does. What she is,” he added, reminding himself that she, in turn, accepted him. Hardly realizing he did so, he slid a hand into his pocket, found the button he carried there. That tiny piece of her. “That obligation started when I fell in love with her, and was sealed when I married her. Before you told her, I’d been engaged in a vicious internal debate about telling her myself.”

“I see.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “I don’t know which side of me would’ve won.”

“I do. You’d have told her, then had your argument over her reaction in private.”

“I expect you’re right.”

“What troubles you more? What she’s planning to do, or the fact that she’s in the position of doing it because her connection to you qualified her?”

“Toss-up. They have utter contempt for me, and enjoy letting it show. Just enough. I suppose they think I’d be insulted, or have my feelings hurt.”

“As you said, they don’t understand you.”

“If they did, they’d have tried to kill her already. They think killing her will inconvenience me, certainly disrupt my personal and professional lives for a bit, cause me some distress.”

He turned the button in his fingers. “They’d enjoy all of that. If they knew losing her would destroy me in levels they can’t imagine, they’d cut her into pieces and bathe in her blood.”

“No.” Eve spoke from the doorway. “No, they wouldn’t because I’m better than they are. They can’t beat me, and they sure as hell can’t beat us. Can you give us a minute?” she asked Mira.

“Yes.” She touched Roarke’s arm before she went back inside the conference room.

“Do you really think those two trust-fund fuckwits could take me down?”

Oh aye, he thought, her ego was healthy enough-so was her temper. But by God, so was his. “Think, no. But neither would I have thought those two trust-fund fuckwits could or would murder nine people or more, and have the NYPSD chasing their tails.”

“Chasing our…” Fury erupted. He’d have sworn his skin singed in the hot flow of its lava. “Is that what you call this? Is that what you call putting a solid case together in under a week? Making connections that tie them up out of sweat and sleepless nights and solid, consistent police work? Chasing our tails?”

“So solid a case you’re about to paint a target on your back rather than trust that solid case and police work.”

“This is police work, goddamn it. This is the job, and you know it. You knew it from the jump, and if you can’t back me when-”

“Stop there,” he warned her. “I haven’t said I wouldn’t back you, but I won’t be pushed into it.”

“I don’t have time to ease into it, to debate and discuss. I didn’t put it together, and I should have. I didn’t see it until Mira pointed it out, and it should’ve been flashing like fucking neon in my brain. I’ll know who their next target is if it’s me, and I won’t have to stand over somebody else I couldn’t save.”

“I understand that, and you, very well.” Christ, he was tired. He couldn’t remember when he’d last been so bloody knackered. “Do you really expect me to have no concerns, no worries, no dark thoughts? Reverse it. I’m putting myself up as bait. What do you do?”

“I trust you enough to know you can and will handle yourself, and use the resources you have available to ensure your own safety.”

“Eve, please don’t stand there and shovel that bullshit at my feet. These are good shoes.”

She hissed out a breath, but at the end of it he saw the chip on her shoulder tumble off. “Okay, I would trust you, but I’d also have some concerns, worries, and dark thoughts. And you’d be sorry I did. You’d hate that I did.”

“All right.”

She squinted at him. “All right? That’s it?”